Ruben Amorim has said when he was a player he would have spoken to his manager about being dropped rather than react in the media, as Marcus Rashford has done. Manchester United’s head coach is undecided about how to deal with the forward, though he is believed to have left him out of the squad for Thursday’s Carabao Cup quarter-final at Tottenham.

Rashford said in an interview with the journalist Henry Winter on Tuesday that he was “ready for a new challenge”. This came after the 27-year-old, who has struggled for form over the past two seasons, had been dropped for United’s 2-1 win against Manchester City on Sunday.

Amorim was asked on Wednesday what he would have done had he found himself in a similar position to Rashford during his playing career. The 39-year-old represented Belenenses, Braga, Benfica and Al-Wakrah and earned 14 caps for Portugal. “I would speak with the manager,” he said, emphatically.

“It’s hard to explain what I am going to do. I’m a little bit emotional,” added Amorim about Rashford’s interview. “I need to prepare for the game and then we will see. Let’s focus on the team, not individual players.”

Rashford is believed not to have been with his teammates who travelled to London on Wednesday afternoon ahead of the Spurs game. However, Alejandro Garnacho, who was also left out of the squad for Sunday’s derby, is understood to have been with the squad.

Amorim was asked if his approach to the situation would be to move on quickly. “It’s a hard situation to comment [on],” he said. “If I give a lot of importance it will have big headlines in the papers and if I say it’s not a problem then my standards are getting low. My focus is to not take the attention away from the game and the team and what we did in the last game.”

It is believed Amorim would be happy to sell Rashford in January as part of a cultural reboot he deems necessary to transform the club, with United’s hierarchy willing to listen to offers for a player who is on wages of £365,000 a week.

The head coach insisted on Wednesday he wants Rashford to stay at Old Trafford and urged him to embrace the “biggest challenge” of proving himself at his boyhood club, but he also admitted he would be powerless to keep the player if his mind is indeed set on a move.

“I don’t control that, what I can control is the way I see things to take my players to the games and the training,” Amorim said, adding that he has not discussed Rashford’s long-term future with the club’s executives. “The interview was [Tuesday]. I’m focused on Tottenham and my focus is to prepare the team for that game. Nothing has changed, we believe in Marcus.

“We have here a new challenge. It’s a tough one. For me it’s the biggest challenge in football because we are in a difficult situation and I already said this is one of the biggest clubs in the world. I really hope all my players are ready for this new challenge.”

Amorim’s team for Sunday’s derby win was leaked in advance but he says he will take no action to discover how that happened.

“Nowadays all of the coaches know about it,” he said. “I explained a lot about the team, how I want us to play, the positions etc, because I understand that the coaches have that information just one time seeing how Manchester United play.

“I also cannot control [leaks]. It’s more important for my players to go to a game with a clear idea of how to do it than try to prevent the leaking of the starting XI.”